Global and Regional Biodiversity and Threats
How is biodiversity distributed across the globe? How effective are well-known species groups, (e.g., birds) as indicators of overall biodiversity? How do these diversity patterns relate to patterns of threat? Where are the greatest opportunities for effective biodiversity conservation? How much will this cost socially and in financial terms?
Addressing these questions helps WWF and the greater conservation community to focus its efforts strategically to conserve biodiversity. While our traditional emphasis has been on terrestrial systems, CSP's focus on marine and freshwater realms has been growing rapidly.
Sample projects:
Testing the utility of indicator taxa for conservation
Summary: Indicator taxa often are proposed as surrogate measures of overall diversity patterns. They potentially offer an efficient way of identifying conservation priorities, but the correlation between putative indicators and other taxa has been largely untested. We used our data set on species distributions among ecoregions to test the utility of nine taxa as indicators of overall species richness across North America. We found that the three most popular choices for indicator taxa (mammals, birds, and butterflies) are not the most informative indicators of overall species richness (when employed either individually or in combination) and as a result may mislead conservation efforts.
Ricketts, T.H., E. Dinerstein, D.M. Olson, C. Loucks. 1999. Who's where in North America: testing the utility of indicator taxa for conservation. Bioscience 49(5): 369-381.
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African biodiversity patterns and conservation priority setting
Abstract: Identifying important areas for conserving biodiversity has attracted much discussion, but relatively few studies have dealt with conflicting socioeconomic interests in a manner that is fully accountable. For the Guinean-Congolian forest region, we applied quantitative methods to select a network of coarse-scale areas sufficient to represent all forest mammal and bird species at least once. In a separate exercise, we prioritized 50 percent of the region to represent the same species as many times as possible. In both cases, we sought to minimize potential conflicts between conservation and other socioeconomic imperatives by considering benefit-to-cost ratios. We found that by choosing areas specifically to minimize conflicts, we were able to increase markedly the proportion of selected areas with low or medium conflict and decrease the proportion with high conflict. Nonetheless, we cannot expect that conservation goals will always be met unless some of these conflicts are faced and resolved. By working together with specialists from both the biological and socioeconomic fields, we show that easily implemented quantitative tools could be useful for supporting the process of finding important areas for biodiversity conservation, while avoiding much of the conflict with other interests.
Williams,P.H., J.L. Moore, A. Kamdem-Toham, T.M. Brooks, H. Strand, J. D'Amico, M. Wisz, N.D. Burgess, A. Balmford and C. Rahbek (2003). Integrating biodiversity priorities with conflicting socio-economic values in the Guinean-Congolian forest region. Biodiversity and Conservation 12: 1297-1320.
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Global diversity patterns of vertebrates
The Conservation Science Program has created a database of species distributions for all of the world's 26,000+ terrestrial amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, based on our 825 terrestrial ecoregions. The data are available in an interactive map-based Web site: www.worldwildlife.org/wildfinder.
This dataset will allow WWF and other groups to prioritize their efforts better worldwide, based on the most complete species data available, and will allow us to test our implicit assumptions regarding the degree of concordance between richness and endemism for the respective taxa. The data are also useful for educators, students, and wildlife enthusiasts.
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Alleviating spatial conflict between people and biodiversity
Abstract: Human settlements are expanding in species-rich regions, and pose a serious threat to biodiversity conservation. We quantify the degree to which this threat manifests itself in two contrasting continents, Australia and North America, and suggest how it can be substantially alleviated. Human population density has a strong positive correlation with species richness in Australia for birds, mammals, amphibians, and butterflies (but not reptiles) and in North America for all five taxa. Nevertheless, conservation investments could secure locations that harbor almost all species while greatly reducing overlap with densely populated regions. We compared two conservation-planning scenarios that each aimed to represent all species at least once in a minimum set of sampling sites. The first scenario assigned equal cost to each site (ignoring differences in human population density); the second assigned a cost proportional to the site's human population density. Under the equal-cost scenario, 13-40 percent of selected sites occurred where population density values were highest (in the top decile). However, this overlap was reduced to as low as 0 percent, and in almost all cases less than 10 percent, under the population-cost scenario, when sites of high population density were avoided where possible. Moreover, this reduction of overlap was achieved with only small increases in the total amount of area requiring protection. As densely populated regions continue to expand rapidly and drive up land values, the strategic conservation investments of the kind highlighted in our analysis are best made now.
Luck, G.W., T.H. Ricketts, G.C. Daily, M. Imhoff (2003). Spatial conflict between people and biodiversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - US. 101(1):182-186.
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Alliance for Zero Extinction
CSP is collaborating with other conservation scientists to identify and map those places where an endangered terrestrial species is restricted to a single remaining site on earth. These places represent the epicenters of imminent extinctions, where species are most likely to go extinct without immediate action. They are clear conservation priorities and powerfully inform broad-scale conservation efforts such as Ecoregion Conservation.
This effort represents a unique alliance of scientists from IUCN, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Birdlife International, World Parks Endowment, American Bird Conservancy, and many other organizations. For more information, see the Alliance for Zero Extinction Web site.
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World Database on Protected Areas
The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is maintained by the UNEP- World Conservation Monitoring Centre on behalf of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas. This database stores information on the position, size, status, year of creation, and main habitats for all the protected lands of the world. The current version of the database (version 6.0) was compiled for the World Parks Congress, held in Durban in September 2003. The compilation process was assisted by a consortium of International NGOs, including WWF, and others, who contributed their own data to the process of updating the database for release at the congress. A protected areas consortium was officially launched at the Parks Congress. The primary aim of this consortium is to help UNEP - WCMC to develop and maintain the best possible database on the worlds protected areas. Such a database is of fundamental importance when trying to measure the response of humans to the biodiversity crisis.
Learn more about the World Parks Congress.
Read about the protected areas consortium.
Download a version of the World Database on Protected Areas.
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